Abraham and Sarah were the ancestors of the people of
Israel, whose cultural identity was
destined to be tied up forever with their wandering. But it is not just
the Hebrew people who are strangers and pilgrims in this world: so are we all.
Like the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years,
Christians too are embarked on a journey between our former bondage and the
promised land.

At
any given moment of our mortal lives, we are somewhere between who we were and
who we are, by grace, becoming. This dynamic tension of the “already-not-yet”
of our lives in Christ lies so deep within that it tells us who we are.

The
otherwise anonymous “Pilgrim” of the Russian spiritual classic The Way of the
Pilgrim represents each of us, is Everyman. The Pilgrim’s hundreds of miles
and many years wandering among strangers—seeking God, seeking a way to pray
without ceasing—is a model for all of us, because his humility and trust and
joyful hope grow in God as he continues his way.

Our status viatoris, our
state of being-on-the-way, is at the heart of Christian life. It is also (the
theologian Josef Pieper tells us in his little book On Hope) the basis of
our hope.

Only
God can bring us out of slavery to freedom; God alone calls us and leads us
where we are meant to go. Our
inescapable human condition is being-on-the-way, from nothingness to being.
And Pieper insists that the only answer that corresponds to our actual
existential situation is hope, not in our own resources but in the God who
rescues us and directs our ways.

God of our hope, we thank you for guiding us in all our wanderings. May we never stray far from where you would have us go. Help us to trust that you are leading us all our lives closer to you; change us more and more into your pilgrim people.

The Signposts for June are written by Deborah Smith Douglas and originally appeared on explorefaith.org in May 2005.